Northern Lehigh School Board once again fielded concerns Monday over the mask-wearing mandate.

Eric King, of Slatington, said that over the past three weeks, his family has been dealing with COVID-19 protocols.

King told the board he was curious “why our district seems to be handling this policy so much different from larger districts.”

“But it seems that we’re taking on all this responsibility ourselves because we’re in a smaller district, whereas other districts are leaving it to the CDC to do all of the contact tracing,” King said. “I just feel that the parents are being affected unequally in our district, and the students are being treated unequally in our district and losing educational time because of this, where other districts neighboring us are not spending the time doing that contact tracing, and not losing out on the education time when they are.”

King said it was his understanding that no state mandate has been issued to require proof of vaccination, and wanted to know why the school is requiring a proof of vaccination to stay in school.

“I think we’re getting too detailed into how we’re doing our contact tracing, and it’s unjustly affecting the kids’ education time. I’d like the kids in school as much as possible,” he said. “What other districts are doing differently that might work better for us here, and also would take the burden off the staff so they don’t have to spend hours and hours doing all this contact tracing as well in the buildings.”

Superintendent Matthew J. Link said that while he can’t speak to what the other district are doing, he could make some phone calls and ask them directly, and then report back in January.

“We are following what has come to us by the CDC with the contact tracing,” Link said. “Quite honestly, the CDC, my interpretation of it, has kind of washed their hands of it, meaning they want us to do the contact tracing and then give them an end-of-the-day Friday report on number of positive students and number of close contacts. That actually changed right before Thanksgiving break.”

Elissa Pesesko told the board she supports them when it comes to the safety of the students.

“I am very happy with any efforts you make to ensure that our kids stay healthy and safe with regards to whatever you need to do to keep a deadly virus from striking,” Pesesko said. “Masking, distancing, contacting, sending them home, I support you 100%.”

Director Gale Husack read two emails that were submitted before the start of Monday’s meeting.

Kyle Ritz, of Slatington, said he wanted to know “why these teachers are making it their responsibility to teach and wrongly educate our children about this vaccine.”

“One teacher, I was told from my son, even said natural antibodies do not exist, so that’s why you should get your COVID shot,” Ritz said. “Can someone explain to me where in the curriculum this is located.”

Link replied, “I would say that items like vaccination, personal health, personal care, is covered within the state standards beginning in grade 3 up, science technology and engineering education standards, as well as our health, safety and physical education standards,” Link said. “So they are within the standards.”

He did not respond to the specific situation.

The second email came from Justin Jachowicz, of Slatington, who said many school districts across the state are choosing to go back to their mask optional policies and update their health and safety plans.

“I am asking that Mr. Link send out a parent survey to determine what the community wants in terms of the health and safety plan,” Jachowicz said. “As always, other local districts are putting plans in place to allow parents the option for masking and how they approach COVID-19. There is not a one-size-fit-all solution, and parents should have the final say when it comes to the health of their children.

Jachowicz asked what is district’s plan moving forward to address the Health and Safety Plan.

“The mask mandate certainly is an issue, but equally, if not more important, is the obsessive quarantining that’s taking place,” he said. “Local school districts like Jim Thorpe and Tamaqua are scaling back and removing the quarantine and masking mandates and we remain in a quagmire.”

Board President Mathias Green said the board has reviewed the policy and discussed it at public meetings on several occasions.

“I thinks ours was one of the few districts that said we were making masks optional,” Green said. “That was our original plan; we were prevented from doing so.”

Green noted Link has been given direction on what to do.

“The board has given direction,” he said. “I think we’re all on the same page with that, and we did move to unmask as soon as possible.”